Between Church and State of Mind
by Draenog Glas Memorial
Summary: Sonic and Shadow are both young boys looking to escape from their dismal lives. They are soon led to a door inside a church that is a world full of insanity and sin, and they soon learn to trust each other, to survive in a world in decay. AU, Sonadow. SCRAPPED.
1. Chapter 1

When I woke up this morning, all I could think of was how nice the world looked today. It was a different kind of silver, the kind that you see when you break glass and the light reflects on it. It was a little foggy, a little rainy. Another dismal day before I could tell myself on how my father told me that Jesus was going to come and burn the world away to small withers, because we were all sinners, and like all of the sinners that lived during Noah's time, they were going to drown like hapless newborn puppies, and I said to myself, "Good. I would like it if they all drowned. I would like it myself if I drowned, too."

He says we will all die when Jesus comes. He will come and save the believers who always said he will come, and then let the others who never believed and went about with their daily lives like usual die and either drown or burn away. Death by either water or fire. And I said to myself that I would rather drown. Because just at that perfect little few seconds you get before you die, you reach an euphoric like state, and you think to yourself, "Gee, thanks Jesus, for saving all the souls who are hypocritical asshats and have always said the world was going to end and have done everything in their rotten little miserable lives that they could to tell everyone on how he was going to come, but boy, I should've listened to them. I should've listened to them when they said I would burn in Hell for doing things that every normal 14 year old boy do, instead of being constantly worried stiff less that God was going to come and burn the whole world like a bundle of sticks on a cold October night. I should've listened to your hypocritical mouth, your hypocritical ways, and I should've looked inside your hypocritical eyes and said to myself, 'Yes sir, I believe in everything in the Bible, even that we couldn't eat shellfish and we shouldn't associate women on their periods. Good thing I'm not with a bunch of girls who started them yet. Turns out they're late bloomers."

But no, I could never make myself say that. I don't believe in my father, and I have a good reason to. Ordinary people who don't think about the end of the world shouldn't be sent to Hell because they weren't scared out of their minds to make a bomb shelter and say that there's only so much food in the world and I should only eat one small bite at a time every breakfast lunch and dinner, and that I should pray and read my Bible everyday. Doctors call that paranoia. And that's one thing my father is. There's so many things my father is, and that's one of them that stands out further than rest. There's another one that stands out right beside it. It's called "schizophrenic".

Paranoid schizophrenia. My father has it, and if you ever had a crazy nut in your family (which I'm very sure all families have at least _one_), then you have a good chance that you could have it someday too!

I wonder if there were kids like me growing up. Reading the Bible every day. Praying before breakfast, lunch, dinner, every time we went outside, when I woke up, before I went to bed, before I even had a single thought in my head that my father would consider "sinful" (and everything could be considered sinful in his eyes, even if all I thought was something as simple as how gray the world looked outside my window this morning). Every time I did what he considered wrong or even had one thought that was sinful, I was hit with a bamboo stick. It felt like the same as the prisoners of Vietnam getting bamboo shoots down their nails, which caused them an extreme pain that would make them confess to something, and I'm sure that there were even people who confessed to the crime they didn't even commit, just so the pain would stop. And being hit by those things, I thought I would get brain damage. But my father was too merciful to let me live in this abysmal shithouse. If only barely.

My father was obsessed with bamboo. He collected many bamboo trees he would see for sale in stores (and sometimes Wal-Mart had those cheap plant sales where the plant was nearly half-dead and he would take it under his wing, nurturing it so it would grow again. My father had a bit of a green thumb for one plant and one plant only) and he would arrange them all over his room. Sometimes the other children would joke that my father was like a panda, collecting all this bamboo. He would take a nail and carve little messages on their shoots. I've seen a few of them.

Scrawled out like a demon carving his skin and decorating the whole wall with his blood.

"Your wife is gone."

"God wants you to burn in Hell."

"You took your medicine."

"Your son is becoming a bad child."

All around him. All these tiny messages. Surrounding him. Reminding him of everything he did. And it made him crazy.

I know my father isn't like other fathers. I look at the other children's fathers at the church, and they seem so happy. Normal. Nothing wrong with them. My father was just an egg. He was okay, holy on the outside, but if something made him crack, his ugliness oozes out. At the very core he was rotten. Twisted. Bloody. Not a yellow, sane yolk.

My dad is an insane man. And I don't know how I survived every day with him.

He's a good guy. I can tell from deep down in that wretched core. He just wanted me to be a good, Christian child. One that had good values and believed in Jesus and God, so when the Second Coming came, I would be okay. That was all my father cared about. The Second Coming. He would hide me in the basement, where he kept all his non-perishable food items and water at. This happened to me many times whenever he thought the Coming was coming. He once forgot water and I drank from the faucet there. I soon had diarrhea and I couldn't hold it in, so I had to shit in a bucket. And my father just didn't care, even if the Second Coming was either here or nowhere.

I do have feelings about my father. Angry feelings. I hate him. But yet I feel like he isn't at fault. His mind is just fucked up. But what's good in a person whose mind was so weak, they needed a pill to make it better? If they lived back when pills weren't around, they would've died. Or killed someone. They're weak, and they make everyone's lives miserable. And my father? He doesn't even take pills.

But yet I don't report him to Child Services. I don't report him to the local loony bin. Because if my father leaves, I have nowhere to go. I didn't want to be a foster child, a ward of the system. I have heard terrible things about the foster homes here, so I decided to be left with my father, even if he was insane. And I didn't want to let go of my home. It was the very last memories I had of my mother, before she died. Cause of death: surgical mishap. Surgical fucking mishap, they called it. Place the word mishap after everything and it sounds like a goddamn blooper reel you saw all the time at the Goodwill, where nobody wanted to fucking buy it because it was so stupid and cheesy and corny, and something that happened to my mother I would consider drastic and heart wrenching and destroying and fucked up and painful, much like a video you would see of someone bleeding and dying and screaming and crawling to you to save them, but you're on the other side of that glass, so you can't do anything, as they were only a person of the past, and you lived in the future. You lived in a time where you didn't even think about this man dying before you, until you saw it, right now, in the present, and you wonder if you could go back to fix everything. But I know I couldn't.

She probably had a benign tumor, but they fucked it all up, and now she's gone. Surgical mishap. Give my damn mother some fucking respect.

My room is the only room untouched by bamboo with tiny messages written across them, in a room with light blue walls, painted clouds on the ceiling, and a large airplane hung in the center. I'm not really into flying and airplanes anymore. This room hasn't changed for many years. But I know my father won't change it any time soon. Too busy praying to God. Too busy being blind. Many memories rush in my head when I go here. I used to have a pet turtle named Moby when I first moved here, when I went to the pond. My father told me to let him go. We also used to play catch at the park. As you can tell, that doesn't happen anymore. I keep my room clean, but once in a while I'll leave things lying about, because I don't see a point in things sometimes. Let that piece of paper lie on the floor for a while. No one is going to tell me to pick it up. And I don't care if all these things have dust. I don't care if it becomes hazardous to my health, because there was nothing in my life that could ever make me want to be a perfect "cleanliness is godliness" like human being that I thought I could literally puke whenever I saw them.

And I didn't even see a point in going to church today.

The bells were ringing. The pastor, who looked like a swan with a craned neck, wearing a white suit, is welcoming everyone who enters the doors. Everyone is wearing nice clothes. My father forced me to wear a suit. But when I got this over and done with, I would immediately take the damn thing off. My father of course was always so excited to go to church. He would always chat up with the pastor and nuns here. Be charming. Normal. If only they knew what he was really like. But if they knew, I would be in a foster home.

As the bells chimed and I walked with my father, seeing the green grasses and the many bluebells greeting us as we entered, I thought about myself. Who I was, what my father wanted me to be like. Maybe my father was crazy because I was everything he didn't want me to be.

My mother named me Shadow. I am 14 years old. When my father wasn't crazy enough, I went to school and got good grades. School was the only escape I had from my father and all this bullshit, but even if teachers said I was intelligent, I "didn't get along with the other classmates". Many times my father had to be in the teacher's office for my "inappropriate, rebellious, and disrespectful" behavior. And my father would scream and hit me for what I did. But what he said didn't really matter in the end, because I went to school the next day acting like myself. As if nothing happened.

We looked evil. Black quills, red streaks, red eyes. But nobody cares because the pastor welcomes me with a handshake while I stand there, saying and looking at nothing.

The church looked nice when I went inside, I had to admit. The sun was breaking through the stained glass, shining on all of us and on the floor beside me as I took a seat on one of the pews.

I didn't really want to listen to the pastor, or stand up and sing, even if my father was going to yell at me for it. As I sat, bored, I saw in one of the holders behind the pew in front of me was a Bible and the book of the songs we were supposed to sing. Looking to have something to make my fingers busy while I sat in this wretched place, I opened it and pointed my finger to a random verse in the Bible.

_This is how God showed His love among us: He sent His one and only Son into the world that we might live through Him._

After he drowned the world, sent people who didn't believe in him to Hell, and told Abraham to kill Isaac? Sometimes I wonder if the Bible was just being ironic sometimes. Like it was a big joke invented by one of the earliest comedians known to us. Maybe he just wrote all this shit just to see how many people would believe in it, and when he saw how gullible people were, he committed suicide.

I looked ahead in the pews, seeing blue quills shining in the light as they bounced up and down. Making sure the pastor didn't see I wasn't paying attention, I leaned closer to the other pew, seeing a blue hedgehog with olive green eyes, playing what seemed to be a Game Boy. He was also not paying attention to the pastor. He actually sneaked a Game Boy inside, so he could play it while the pastor was talking about whatever nonsense I didn't believe in. It looked like he was playing a Mario game, as the sprite that bobbed up and down in the screen looked like Mario. He didn't had the sound on so the pastor wouldn't notice him, as he quietly fiddled with the Game Boy while he whispered comments to himself, such as "Crap, I should've not got hit by that" and "Alright, got a mushroom!" I wasn't sure how no one was noticing this. Where were his parents? This kid was sitting by himself! Did he go to church by himself, just to play with his Game Boy?

"Hey kid, where are your parents? Why did you go to church today?" I whispered into his ear, which made him mess up in his game and start the level over.

"Sssssh!" he shushed me, putting his finger to his lips. He restarted the level over, while I continued to stare at him.

"Seriously, why are you in here? Are you just here to play your Game Boy in the quiet? I don't see your parents…" He ignored me, as he was completely focused in his game. He was now fighting a boss.

Still curious about why he was here, I continued to pester him, but he wasn't listening to my voice anymore. He was completely absorbed in his game, hitting the boss twice. He was about to hit it for the third time, about to defeat him, until I began to realize that I had to be more annoying to this brat so I can get his attention. I flicked his ear, as he died by the boss' fireball and was out of lives, getting the GAME OVER screen.

"Why did you do that! Did you see what you did to my game? I'll get you for that!" he shouted at me as he turned around, now the entire church audience focused on us. He threw a weak punch at me that I managed to avoid, while I grabbed one of his quills and started tugging at it, the blue child howling in pain. The pastor was witnessing this, so was my dad, and they thought they had enough. "You two! Stop that at once!"

My father grabbed me and put me back in my seat, as the pastor gripped the child's hand and took him to the far corner of one of the rooms in the church. Of course, since he was at a church, my father composed himself, as he gave me the look that said "We'll discuss this at home, lad", as the sermon was interrupted by the pastor reprimanding the blue child. I couldn't hear much, but the pastor did mention such things as "You do not ignore my sermons and act this way! It's the house of the lord for crying out loud!" and "When this sermon is over, you're in big trouble! You're 10 years old, boy! Act like it instead of a 5 year old!"

When the sermon was done and he announced the upcoming church events in our county, I told my father I had to use the bathroom. So I left the pews and went inside one of the church's chambers, to get as far away from my father as possible. I thought I might as well make the time before the supposed punishment linger as much as possible. I didn't felt like dealing with my father, especially when it came to church matters such as this. He thought I would burn in Hell every time I "acted up" in the house of the lord.

I saw the blue hedgehog again, as he was leaning against the chamber walls, playing with his Game Boy again. It was like he tried to ignore me the first few seconds I was there, staring at his game, then back at me. It was until he decided to shut it off and point a finger at me.

"You made the pastor get mad at me! You got me into this mess! Now because of you the pastor is going to make me stay here and do church work! It's all your fault!"

"My fault?" I repeated. "You were the one who overreacted when I tried to get your attention. You should've just continued to talk to me in whispers and none of this would've happened!"

"You flicked my ear, and I _hate it _when people like you do that! Now I have to clean the church floors, and I hate cleaning!"

"Boo hoo, at least you don't have a father who will beat you when you acted out at church like you made me do!"

He stopped, staring into my eyes, then he looked down. I could tell I said too much about my life, and he realized for a moment that things he was dealing with weren't that bad after all. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry I even did that to you…"

"Well, you can't apologize now, because when my father gets here and we get out of here and back home, he'll beat me with his damned bamboo sticks, and he'll beat me hard this time, because when he sees me do things like what we just did at this church, he tends to be pretty pissed! And you're complaining because you have to do work? I'd rather have your punishment!"

He continued to stare at me with sympathetic eyes, as if he was been through all that before, and suddenly, he grasped me around his arms, hugging me tight.

I immediately wanted him to let go of me. He was some random kid who didn't know anything about what I went through everyday, he had no right to hug me! I pushed him away, the shove strong enough to send his back crashing into the wall, as I screamed, "Don't touch me!"

The damn blue hedgehog pissed me off. He continued to look at me with a look of empathy as I began to reach for my Marlboros. Of course, it was a church, I shouldn't smoke here, but the whole bullshit with my father and all just had me pissed and stressed out, and I wasn't going to go outside to smoke. I hid my smoking habit from my father, hiding the cigarettes and smoking in the same undisclosed area he didn't know about. I was also hoping there was no smoke detector in the chambers of the church, otherwise my father would beat me for not only acting out, but finding out that I was a 14 year old 8th grade student who smoked.

The blue hedgehog said nothing as I continued to stand there, puffing out smoke like the factories (that always looked like cigarettes eternally burning in the sky) near the church. He didn't even mention how I was a child that started smoking. I guess he didn't want to piss me off even further. But he asked me a question while I burned out the tobacco in the first end of my cigarette.

"What's your name?"

While the smoke lingered in the air, curving and making white, smoky strands float, I decided to answer him. "My mother called me Shadow. That was the name that has stuck with me ever since."

"I was called Sonic before. I don't remember my real name. My real parents died years ago in a car accident. The pastor of the church takes care of me here now. But everyone just calls me Sonic, and that name stuck too."

This hedgehog was living my fear. Living as a foster child, living in this church and being this pastor's son. But hearing what his pastor would threaten on him, I would rather have his life than what I had to deal with on a daily basis. If only I didn't had so many memories I didn't want to forget.

As the last of my cigarette burnt out, I dropped it into the bathroom toilet and flushed it down. So they wouldn't see the evidence of anyone smoking in here.

The bells were ringing again, signifying that the sermon was officially over. I began to walk down the halls, trying to hide myself even further if my father came looking for me. It was until I began to hear more footsteps behind me that I stopped and turned around.

The blue hedgehog was following me, as he stopped as well and looked away. He acted as if he wasn't stalking me at all, but I knew he was.

"What do you want? Can't you see I'm trying to get away from my dad who's going to beat me for this?"

"There's a place in this church that the pastor never lets me in. He doesn't let anyone else in it too. Maybe we can hide there."

"Why do you want to hide too? Last I heard, you just had church work! It's not like you have an abusive father to come home to!"

"Because I'm really curious about this room. I always wondered what's in it. Maybe we can find out together."

I wasn't interested in hiding with this joker, but yet the sound of a room that a pastor never let anyone in to see sounded intriguing, and you can say I was up for a little adventure that day. "Alright, where is this room at? I wouldn't hide with you, but maybe my father won't be able to find me here," I said, gazing back at him.

He began to turn around, pointing to a nearby corridor. "The room is actually on the east side of the chambers, in a set of locked steel doors. The pastor doesn't even let me near the doors. When I was younger, he said that if I ever opened those doors, a monster would jump at me. And now that I'm older, I'm suspicious if he made up a weird lie like that for me to not open those doors."

I began to follow him as we walked out of one corridor to the other, hearing many feet shuffling above us. I tell the blue hedgehog to hurry, otherwise my father would find me and we would probably both get in trouble for even being here.

It was then that he grabbed me, and he began to run down the halls, the hedgehog taking no time to get to these doors. He took me by surprise, but I managed to keep my pace, as I overheard my father shouting for my name, and the pastor shouting the blue hedgehog's as well. "Shadow! Sonic! Where are you boys? I hope you two aren't acting up again! We are already upset with you!"

Like when he said that I was going to give out my location. Any sane boy wouldn't.

We made it to the doors, which was unlike any door I've seen. It was steel, but it was imprinted with the sun and the moon, both in the same sky, as wisps of clouds decorated the sides. There was a large sign that said in big bold black letters **KEEP OUT, ESPECIALLY YOUNG CHILDREN SUCH AS YOURSELF, SONIC**. There was a tiny gemstone in the front, a glittering pink amethyst that seemed to glow in the little light these chambers had.

It was definitely a mysterious door. And the fact that the pastor of the church didn't want children like Sonic and I inside it was definitely a mystery in of itself. And it made me even more intrigued, as I felt the gemstone with my fingers.

"What else do you know about this door? Any reason why the pastor doesn't want you in here?"

"No, that's all I know. He doesn't want me in here at all, and will even make up a lie that a monster will eat me up if I even go near here. It's definitely weird, because I never saw a church have a door like this."

I heard the pastor and my father coming down the stairs into the chambers, and we weren't that far from the stairs. They continued to belt out our names. "Shadow! Sonic! Come here right now!"

My heart was beating faster. We had to open this door, and quick. I tried to shove it open, but it wouldn't even budge. It felt as if there was something against the doors that even if you used all your might to open them it wouldn't open. I began to lean more onto the door, using all the strength in my body to plunge into it, as I could hear the footsteps becoming louder. The door was firm, and it didn't even open a crack.

"Do you have any bright ideas, joker? This door won't open at all, and the pastor and my father are coming! Get a solution, and quick!" I snapped.

He looked back at me, trying to keep his cool despite our fathers getting closer to us. "I did see the pastor do this to the door, but maybe it's one of those doors that only let a certain person inside, so I can't promise you that this will work…"

"Well, what are you waiting for? Hurry up and try to pry open the damn thing!"

I could tell that the anger in my voice made him pick up the pace, as he shoved me out of the way and put the palm of his hand on the gemstone. I could see the shadows of the pastor and my father creeping close, so I once again told him to hurry up.

It was then that he uttered these words so quick that I could barely catch them, as he said, "In the power of God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit, you will let us open this door and let us see this world!"

The gem sparked, a flash of pink glowing light snapping. It was then that the big, heavy doors broke apart, and the room sucked us in, before the pastor and my father noticed what was happening. Right as soon as we got in, the doors were shut. And we were now inside another room, the room that the pastor forbid the blue hedgehog from entering.

It was a strange room. All around the walls, I could see numbers flying at me, many different minutes, seconds, and hours passing by. I could hear a thundering _tick-tock _as we walked by, as I saw many different clocks on the walls.

Many different varieties. The regular black and white numbers that were Is and Xs, sometimes Vs. Cuckoo clocks that had the little blue birds mock me with their laughter. Even those cheesy Felix the Cat clocks were on the walls, their tails and eyes swiveling back and forth, as if they were paranoid of anyone suddenly taking them away. All the times were different. Some said it was 10:24, some said it was 6:45, and some said it was 12:00. Looking at the walls you couldn't tell what time it really was, because they all gave you different answers, and almost all of them were wrong.

We didn't gaze at the clocks for particularly long, as we began to walk down a narrow hallway that seemed to get smaller and smaller as we walked inside it. I could feel claustrophobic going down it, as I began to feel cramped, and the blue hedgehog being with me didn't help matters. It was like we were going down a rabbit hole, probably one from the white rabbit in _Alice Adventure's in Wonderland. _I bet if he looked at all the clocks on the wall he would feel like he was running late and go down this hole, while I followed him, not knowing what I was getting myself into. The blue hedgehog and I weren't sure where we were going, but we were children, and we were fascinated with this room. We had to explore.

My body began to feel more crushed and tightened as we were going down this hole, so much that the blue hedgehog and I were beginning to crawl on our hands and knees. I was beginning to get a little fearful, as I felt the walls closing in on me and we would be trapped here for the rest of our lives. But yet something in me wanted to carry on, and I continued to follow the hedgehog, as he saw a glowing lantern that was shedding some light for us. He carefully picked it up, holding it up as we crawled further, and I was now noticing the hole was getting darker and tighter.

It was good that we were children, otherwise if we were full-grown adults we would've been stuck inside this corridor already. The walls were blacker, that if it wasn't for the hedgehog's light we would be as blind as moles, digging our way and hoping we would find the outside world. It was then that the hedgehog stopped, as he took the lantern and showed me why: he was near the end, and there was a blue checkerboard door, looking old and the paint a little faded and chipped, begging to be opened.

"Well, what are you waiting for, hedgehog? Open the door!" I shouted, as he stood there, gaping at it like a blubbering fool.

"But…" He looked at me, with worried eyes. "What if, behind this door…" He gulped. "…is a monster?"

"Oh, you big baby, just open the door! There's no such thing as monsters!"

He looked away, unsure, as he reached for the knob. "Okay, but if a big monster comes and eat us up you can only say I told you so!"

He opened the door, with shaking hands that seemed like they would break as if they were fine china, and we were greeted by the pitch blackness. So black that the hedgehog's lamp couldn't light it up. Blacker than my fur. But yet we journeyed on, as we dug through the earth, our eyes being bewildered like a puppy that just opened its eyes.

We were in a completely different world, a world much different than the one we were living in before. A world I thought that God has forgotten about.

"Sonic."

"Yes Shadow?"

He looked at me, his eyes and mouth gaping at such a wondrous world that was only under our feet, in a world we always knew about and despised, called the church.

"I don't think we're back at home anymore, are we?"

He shook his head.

"No Shadow. No we're not."


	2. Chapter 2

The past has always been a conniving, evil monster, swallowing up people's guilts and fears. It has sharp teeth that reflect the moment that you could've said this, you could've said that, why did you do that, why did you do this, and it will smile with its ugly smile before it gulps you and swallows you whole. The monster lives in the back of our heads, ready to rear up, ready for us to regret everything in our lives, smiling, waiting for us to give ourselves to worry in the future. And the future is even worse. A black creature with black eyes and black teeth, waiting for us to freeze up in anxiety simply because we don't know what kind of person we're going to end up being in that future. We never live in the present. Just the past, and the future. That's all we ever wanted to live. No one thinks about the present. No one thinks about the now.

I never do that, because I'm not like other people. But I do regret one thing in the past. Just one, damned little thing.

Here's my story. It was a cloudy, but yet quite sunny morning (which is rare in Britain. It's always cloudy here.), the sun's rays trying to get through to the clouds and creating a heavenly, brilliant glow behind them. There was snow on the ground, but it was half frozen but yet melted, in long, white and gray slushes. It was January, the month where my father's birthday landed on. This would also mark the year of the day of my mother's death.

I was 8 years old, naïve and stupid. I was still devastated by my mother's death at this time. I drew many pictures of her. Many pictures where I wished she would come back.

She was white. With golden quills on top of her head. Maybe as a mutation that I never got. She also never had the streaks my father had. I always drew her horribly, but I tried my best to capture her most notable features, such as her clear ocean blue eyes my father was always fond of.

My father was still working at this time, not feeding off the government in welfare checks. He always came home from work in a daze, heading straight to his room. In his room was a pot. One shoot of bamboo sticking out. He always watered it. He always remembered to water it.

I decided I would give him a picture for his birthday, seeing as how I was 8 years old and I couldn't get myself a job and my father never assigned me chores. That was my mother's job. And she was gone.

My favorite crayon at that age was always cerulean. There was no other color that captured the beauty, the essence and the spirit of the ocean, the sky, someone's eyes, like my mother. I could draw the whole damn picture with just the color cerulean if I wanted to. I even wrote on my class's report on colors that my favorite was cerulean. _It is the purest shade of blue I have ever seen. It is like my mom's eyes. _

It was the best drawing I ever did at that time. In the picture, even my mother's golden quills were as luxurious as they were in reality. Her smile was just as heartwarming, and her eyes, colored in cerulean crayon, were just as blue as they were when you looked at her when she was still alive. I kept it in one of my school folders until the day it was my father's birthday. _I hope he'll appreciate it as much as I do._

The 15th was my father's birthday. He had to work that day, and he came back, going into his room and turning the computer on. Watering that shoot of bamboo as well. This was also the time he didn't say anything to me for 3 days straight. Ever since my mother died, he doesn't speak much to me. Neither do I.

I tried to divert his attention from the computer screen to look at the drawing I made. "Look dad, I made a picture of mom. For your birthday. I hope you like it."

It was a simple plea. Just for my father to appreciate the damn picture I made him.

But I guess the picture looked too much like his wife. The only one who kept him sane for all those years. The only one who actually loved him, unlike his ungrateful son.

"Margaret…" he whispered, as he slowly analyzed my shoddy drawing. "Margaret…"

That was the first word he spoke in 3 days. And probably the only word he said that didn't involved _church, God, prayer, Bible, Hell, _and _Satan._

He kept repeating that. _Margaret Margaret Margaret. _Over and over. Then, in a sudden flash of insanity, he began to tear my drawing up.

I tried not to cry in front of him. I tried very hard to hold back my tears at this moment. He shredded my drawing I spent a long time on, while he began to utter a sound that was like he was crying and laughing at the same time.

"You don't know anything about Margaret's disappearance, boy! I know she was taken away by the government! The government is doing all kinds of experiments on her, and it was all my fault I gave the benefit of the doubt believing all those bastards at the hospital room. Oh, if only she can go to God for guidance! Is this God's way to punish me?" He shook violently, his knees quaked, and then he broke down and sobbed. He could only get on his shabby knees and cry.

I unintentionally broke my father. On his birthday. With just a childish drawing of my mother.

I said nothing, and only left his room. I could do nothing to help him. My father was insane and I could do little for him at that age.

Teachers noted how my father was a little "off" but they didn't know the whole reality of him. How he treated me and how I mostly had to do things for myself. I had to make my own meals, get myself ready for school, keep the house presentable to people who dared to come inside it, because I knew my father was never going to do those things. Just sit on that computer chair and mumble about how the government took his dear wife.

I couldn't convince him that the government didn't take her. He never believed anyone. He only believed in his head, the voices, and the crackpot theories the Internet would feed him. The Internet was the only place he believed in, the only place he belonged in. Because it had thousands of paranoid men like him, talking about how the government was poisoning our water and food. There was even a time he didn't eat anything for a week, believing they were all contaminated with cyanide or small machines.

I regret that day. I regret even giving my father anything. I regret even bothering with him. I would live on the streets if I had to, but I knew someone would report it. Even I lied about my father being a good parent; I would get hit by him again for even thinking of being away from him.

I would always imagine myself older. Old enough to leave home. But I was only 14. I had to wait six more years. And I felt like I couldn't wait any longer than that.

Sometimes I imagined myself out of my father's home. Forever. There was the old-fashioned blade my father used to shave with. I could take it and make a clean cut on one of my arteries on my neck. Just end it.

But I felt like I had to go down in another way. Go down with a bang. And I wished I had a friend who had something like a father in the police force who always kept a gun around the house. So I could take it and end everything in a flash.

But that will probably take years too for me to do. Sometimes I would just forget about it and try to go on to the next day. But it seemed like the more I lived, the more the time kept going slower and slower. It would probably take me ages for me to be 18. Civilization probably would've already ended. My father might even die before me.

I try to forget about the past, that slobbering, horrible, blinded monster named the Past. And live in the present. Even if the present was just as painful. The present, I forgot to tell you, was also a monster. You see, when you live a horrible life, all three of them are monsters. The past contained painful memories. The present contained the painful truths I was living in now. And the future would only get worse. That was, if I didn't somehow found my way out of my predicament.

We crawl out of the rabbit hole and already I feel as if I'm stronger. The sky was a shade of violet blue and we gazed around what looked like a savanna. Lush grasses that was just as tall as us. Trees that bended and seemed sparse of leaves, as if a giraffe came and ate them all already. I look at the hedgehog who looked to be taller and his grunts deeper as he dug himself out of the hole. It was as if when we entered this world we already aged. I was probably already 18 and Sonic was about 16. The age I always wanted to be was gained, just for simply entering this world.

"Hedgehog, look at us. We're…older now. Somehow coming here made us age by a few years."

He looked at himself, noticing he was taller and his quills were longer. "Are we…really? How did that happened? You look older too!" He kept looking at himself and I, amazed at our transformation.

I kept looking around, seeing only dense grass in the distance. The heat was smoldering, as the sun beat on us, already sweating a few pearls from my head. Even if I was taller I still couldn't see very far without grasses blocking my view.

The hedgehog whistled obnoxiously, as if in amazement at this world and our growth. "What kind of place is this anyways? This must be some kind of alternate dimension or something, because where else would we suddenly grow by that much? But all I see out here is grass. Where are we?"

"I don't know, now shut up," I snapped. "The only way we can actually see through out here is if we climb onto that tree." I pointed to it, the twisted tree that had some of the most disturbing looking birds I've seen. They had glossy black feathers, sometimes shaded in dark reds or blues, with a tuft of white feathers around their long neck that helped hold a human head. And their head was nothing but human features. Not even a beak. Many of them were perched on the tree, overseeing the world around them. Some were fighting over what looked like a carcass, pulling it apart with their mouths.

"On that tree? With those freaky looking birds over there? I don't know, Shadow…for some reason, I don't want to go over there."

"Why? Because you're scared?"

He nodded, his gaze focused on it.

I scoffed. "Don't be such a wuss. Where else are we going to go? We can't go through this grass without even knowing where we're going."

We began to walk, pushing the grass with our hands. I noticed the grass was yellow and seemed to grow like a shoot, and it had to remind me of the many bamboo sticks my father would grow and water around his room and anywhere else in the house. I wasn't exactly sure why he was so obsessed with the plant, and seeing that the grasses were pretty similar to it made me more annoyed. I honestly wished I would never see another bamboo plant for as long as I lived, and I hoped there weren't any in this world.

I once wrote a report on an interesting feature in China in about 2nd grade, and I picked pandas.

_Pandas eat bamboo. And I hope they can eat all the bamboo in the world because my father is crazy and bamboo reminds me of him. Bamboo is a horrible plant because it can be used to kill people._

My teacher did mark the two sentences out in red pen but never minded anything else. I guess I must've written a really damn good report on pandas for only being in the 2nd grade.

He never even cared that I told the truth about my father. Imagine that.

I already felt like I was suffocating in the heat. The sun glistened in the sky and already made us exhausted for only going through grass. And I had to remind myself that Sonic probably still had the personality of a young hoglet as we made our way to the twisted tree.

"Shadow, it's...really hot out here. And I don't feel right going through all these grasses. What if a monster suddenly…"

"Quit whining, you big baby! We're here so we might as well explore and see what this world is like. Do you want to go back to the church and get in trouble for opening the forbidden door?"

He shook his head. "No…I'm just…"

"Well then let's keep going! Just grow a pair, will you?"

He looked perplexed as I continued to walk. "How do I grow a fruit? Only trees and plants can do that!"

I hit my face with the palm of my hand. I had to ignore what he said as I felt myself step on something harder than the ground I was originally walking on. I stopped and glanced my feet, seeing something gray and seeming as if it was implanted into the ground. I could sense that it was a tree root, as long and bended as the owner. I was at the tree, examining it as it towered over me, with the many shadows of the birds casting over me. I came closer to the trunk, a long skinny silver birch that was surprisingly smooth as I jumped onto the nearest branch I could. I managed to get a good hold, pulling myself up using everything I had in my legs.

I could see that the whole land ahead of us was nothing but a big field, surrounded by an overabundance of grasses, marked by a few tall, twisted trees in the distance. I really couldn't see anything else but grass, trees, and these demented-looking birds as they casted their eyes on me. Their eyes were like sharp gems, gleaming in the light, and I could see myself in their glares. Their eyes carried a sense of evil, some kind of hidden sinister agenda somewhere in them. But yet these humanoid birds did not attack me, but instead kept talking and chattering about something over and over again.

"Even with speed and a Silver Heart, the world is cruel. Even with apathy and intelligence, the world is cruel. Even with these things together, the world is cruel. The world is cruel, and we are merely bystanders in the mess that this world is…"

I wasn't sure of what they meant. Of course I knew what they meant by "the world is cruel". I experienced that firsthand. But yet there seemed to be some kind of ominous message behind what they were saying, as if their words should be taken into as much consideration as a wise old man telling you any of Aesop's fables. They continued to fly around the tree and prattle about what the bird said, and they continued to repeat it, until my ears were filled with their muttering and squawks, resounding as the own voice in my head.

I continued to crawl on the branch, making the strange creatures fly away from me as they rambled on. As I looked out in the horizon, I saw that there were some tall buildings, shining brightly as the sun glowed. They seemed to be made of glass and metal, as one of them I could see the innards of the building. Desks and that sort of thing. People walking around in them, or shadows anyways. There were roads as well in the distance, but I couldn't see people walking on them or any cars. But it looked like an idyllic city, with its many tall, fancy-looking buildings. I could see that if we continued through the grass, we'd be near civilization. Then we could find out what this world was.

The birds continued to caw, talk, and squawk around me, their shining eyes continuing to stare at me as if I've done something to upset them. It was as if they were giving me some sort of warning, as if something terrible was going to happen to the both of us. Something very terrible. I couldn't help but feel as if these birds were messengers of some foreboding message. But I could only get back down the tree and ignore them, as they began to tear away at yet another animal carcass brought up in the tree, strips of meat and bone falling from above.

The hedgehog was still there at the bottom of the tree, looking at me as if he was worried. Even when he spoke there was a sense of stress in his voice.

"W-where are we heading to, S-Shadow?"

I could see that he was sweating a bit more than usual. Not just from the sun's heat.

"If we go west from here there's actually a city. Maybe there'll be people there who can tell us about this world and where we can go from there. Maybe get some food too, if they'll accept my money."

Sonic sounded as if he was going to whine about something else, but just looking at him caused him to keep his mouth shut. We started to walk westward, once again going through the forest of grass. I could still hear the birds echo repeatedly, "the world is cruel".

Ten minutes passed as we walked through the fields. Surprisingly Sonic was quiet as we made our way to yet another downtrodden tree. This tree was bare of leaves as well, but yet the branches seemed to be trying to reach the ground, as if it dropped or was looking for something. The trunk was also S-shaped. It was a strange tree, looking for a thing lost long ago, waiting to see again with its kaleidoscope eyes, but that thing would never be retrieved again, and no one would care to try to help it search for it, not even those peculiar-looking birds were roosted on it, gazing at the ground with their sharpened, finely tuned eyes, not at all like the tree's. It was a lonely tree, one lost and hurt, and we were the only ones around it.

Sonic still looked nervous as I took a glance at him. It seemed as if he just saw something terrifying or heard something as sinister as the birds.

"Shadow…did you hear anything? Anything when we were walking?"

I looked at him fully, examining him with those demon red eyes that my father said we were going to instantly go to Hell for, and then I turned around halfway. "I didn't hear anything. I don't care how scared you are you wuss, we're going to keep going till we reach the city. Not a word from…"

"I heard a snort, and heavy footsteps! And they're getting louder! Can't you hear them? Something is coming!"

I heard it now. Heavy, quick stomping. I looked at the ground. The few pebbles gathered at my feet were shaking, rising in the air. It was like a steam engine, traveling full-force at us. It was then that I had to quickly dodge out of the way, Sonic did as well with his nimble footsteps, as a giant gray beast came charging at us, roaring a thundering yell that sounded as if it was coming from a machine than an animal.

We were both on the ground, turning our heads to see what we would've been killed by if we weren't careful. The beast looked much like a rhinoceros, except it had two protruding horns, both of them with another horn at each side. It also had no eyes. Only a white streak going down at the sides of its face. It had many spikes running down its back, along with a tail that looked too similar to a farmer's scythe. Even if it didn't had eyes, it seemed to know where we were, as it roared again, seeing its many teeth as it belted out a metallic scream that screeched in our ears.

"What…what is that thing? It doesn't look happy, whatever it is!"

"Shut up, pick yourself up, and run like hell!"

I would have to admit, I was scared of this thing. Looking at it screamed that if I didn't do something I was going to die. And even if I thought of suicide a few times when I was with my father, I feared death. I just feared about what would happen if I died. And right now, I didn't want to find out.

I couldn't think of any other action other than running. I knew that the monster would just shake us from the tree by running into it or destroying it. It looked too thin to even survive one stab at its horn. It was then that I remembered that it only took about 20 seconds for a rhino to run just as fast as us. It could become as fast as thunder traveling down the air to the Earth in a storm when it was charging at something. I had to do something else to escape from this creature in one piece. I had to fight it somehow, even if I barely had anything in my arsenal.

The only thing I could find near me was a rock, round and a good size to maybe distract it. Sonic continued to run as I stood there, picking up the stone and throwing it at the rhino as it was heading my way, at full speed. Sonic could only look back and suddenly stop running.

I hit it square on the head, but the rock only broke away into fragments. It did absolutely nothing to it. And it was so close to me. I was going to die, doing something idiotic that had no effect on it whatsoever.

Everything seemed to slow down. I wondered if this was what happened before you died. Everything becomes slower, and slower, until it suddenly spirals down and fades away. I saw something in that slowed down moment, in the moment I thought I was going to die.

"Shadow!"

A scream. A hush of sound. The heavy footsteps. The roar. The steam engine traveling hundreds and hundreds and thousands and thousands of miles. The snorting. And suddenly, like water freezing into ice, it seemed as if it was slowing down, gradually, until it came to a full stop, and there was then, no sound at all, no pain, no regret, no sorrow, and not even any anticipation.

But I knew I was on the side of the path we walked on, and even if everything slowed down and froze, I didn't pay attention, and suddenly things were as fast as Jesus would travel to Earth if he decided the world was going to end at that exact moment in time. And I sucked in all the air I could into my lungs, and I looked around.

I heard nothing and felt nothing. And when I got up, I saw nothing but grass and the footprints the monster left. Big, round footprints about twice the size of my feet.

The weird thing is that I didn't see any blood or trace of the monster anywhere. I didn't even see Sonic's dead body. They were both gone, like that, in a flash of the eye blinking. And I would probably never know why.

On the path near the large footprints, I saw Sonic's brown knapsack that kept all his keepsakes. And when I went through them, I could tell that some of them got crushed under the beast's feet. His Gameboy screen was now smashed, it now completely black under the cracked glass. He also seemed to collect colorful marbles, many of them in different colors and swirls that seemed to have also broken apart and trampled on.

I pulled out one of the items that were still left intact. It was a gold locket, round and had the words, "EMMANUEL CHURCH OF BILLERICAY," along with white lines that resembled the church we just escaped from, except some of the lines have faded away from scratches that streaked it.

I was able to open it and look inside. There was a date that was scratched with something. _1. 15. 1996. _On the other side of the lock was Sonic, looking a lot younger, surrounded by his mother and father, one with blue fur like him, and green-eyed, the other with purple fur and blue-eyed like my mother, but they were happy. I could tell that this was also a Christmas photo, as there was a Christmas tree in the background. The glass on the picture was cracked, but otherwise the photo was still in good condition.

Sonic suddenly pushed me. Out of the way. And I could only imagine what the monster did to him in that moment.

_He sacrificed himself. He sacrificed himself, even if I treated him like dirt. Maybe the hedgehog wasn't a wuss after all. He was insane. Insane to even consider doing something like that for me._

I shut the locket carefully as I put it back in his knapsack. I decided to carry it around with me as I continued on.

_That poor, crazy hedgehog. I will make sure to honor your death. You wouldn't have died in vain._


	3. Chapter 3

My mother was diagnosed with a tumor in her breast. They weren't sure if it was malignant or not. It could've been benign for all I know. Wouldn't that be ironic?

My mother kept reassuring me that everything was going to be fine. "It might just be benign, dear. I'm sure once they take it out, I'll be as good as new again. You tell your father that too. He's been stressing himself to death over this whole ordeal."

My mother was also the sweetest hedgehog I have ever known. She was the all-around good mother you would see so many times on 50's television. She was a housewife, cooking and making sure the house was clean from my father's clutter. She always asked me how was school and sometimes even baked an apple pie an hour before I got home. She would always say I was the sweetest boy she ever knew, no matter what anyone else said.

She was too good for my father. I don't even know how they met and why they decided to marry. When my father was sick and she received a diagnosis about his condition, a very grim diagnosis more grim than a tumor, she said she would never leave him behind and she would always be there for him.

She lied to me about his diagnosis, however. She told me that my father was diagnosed with cancer, but I later discovered the type of hospital my father was in. A psychiatric hospital. And he was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. The doctor even wrote that his condition was so severe that she probably would need him to stay there for many months to a year. But she refused and let him stay with us as long as he took his medicine.

He didn't and she's gone now. I'm too afraid to report him to the hospital. I'm too afraid to even suggest to him to take his pills. He's convinced it would turn him into a demon or some other fucked up shit like that. My father also believes that medicine, whether therapeutic or not, is all bad and should never be taken. But when you're faced with a disorder such as schizophrenia, your brain malfunctions and can't live without those same chemicals the medicine produces. A radio that can't pick up any signals. From what I learned of schizophrenia, that's all the disorder is. A hellish discord that repeats again in your head. You pick up on some signals, like voices and things that aren't really there, and they disappear in a flash. All these signals come in and you don't know where they're from or what they're about. One minute they're talking about Jesus and then the next about political issues, all the while something goes off in your brain thinking that somehow, everyone is out to get you and make your life miserable. This discord gets louder, screeching and eerie squeaks until you overheat and you're smashed on the floor and you don't know how you got there but yet you don't want to know. Because the only thing you think is how God decided to give you this wretched disorder and even though everything seems okay, you're living like the people he sent to Hell. Demons have taken over your brain and you can't function as well as you should, even you might become a completely different person. Demons are just having fun with your brain, pressing the right buttons for you to no longer know what's real or not anymore. You might as well drive a goddamn railroad spike in your brain and let it bleed, bleed until you no longer suffer and you no longer are in Hell and the screams in your head stop demanding so much from you and everything is suddenly quiet.

Maybe I'm more sympathetic to my father than I thought. But when I see my father act the way he acts, I can't help but thank God that he spared me.

The sun was lowering when I began to arrive at the city. It was getting cold. The draft of wind began to chill me, shivering as I gazed at the violet and crimson sky, with clouds overcast that seemed to gather near the sun, as if the clouds themselves were huddling each other for warmth. It was difficult for me to see the many buildings that towered me in this city. I could see a few glowing lights on as the sun was sinking down, but other than a flickering red light at the top and the street lamps flashing on when I approached them, I couldn't see the many buildings that were ahead of me.

The city was silent. I barely saw a single person walking on the streets or any cars driving down. It was as if I was the only person in this dark city. I felt a strange sense of emptiness when I was walking in these streets. Lonely too. I felt sort of bad I didn't had that hedgehog around me anymore, and I knew I had to stay in this world now. I couldn't tell the pastor his son was killed when he entered this world. He would possibly condemn me for losing his son. The only consolation I would give him is that he sacrificed his life for me, like Jesus did on the cross. At least his life was ended by being completely selfless and save me like he did. But I couldn't go back there. I couldn't go back there with my father. Maybe these people could help me. I felt like I was a fugitive and I had to live in a distant land, so my father and the pastor couldn't find me. I had to run far away from them. I felt like I was a little at fault for killing the blue hedgehog, and I wasn't going to go back to the pastor.

As another street lamp began to blink on for me, I decided to stand beside it near a red bricked building and pull out a cigarette. What happened was too much stress for me to handle. I really felt like I shouldn't have came here in the first place. If we just faced our fathers, Sonic would still be alive, but it also meant I would go back to my shitty life, with my shitty father, with my shitty school and my shitty house. I had no choice but to stay here. In a world that I don't even know the name of. Whether it was a flourishing city, a ghetto, or some fucked up place only dreamt in the minds of mental patients such as my dad, I would have to stay here. It had to be better. It had to be better than living with my father. If I went back to reality, I would be 12 again and powerless. And I was too damn tired of being weak and have no say in anything. _You're only 12. Just a child. _But yet I had more sense than most of the people I ever met in my life.

I couldn't help but think more about my life as I puffed the last remaining tar in my cigarette and throw it on the ground and crush it with my foot. Everything still felt silent and I still felt alone as I twisted my foot on it, the glowing cinders dead. Still, nothing moved in this city and the only sound I could hear was the wind blowing around the corridors. As the silence kept growing louder, the wind becoming weaker, I looked back at Sonic's knapsack. His crushed marbles and Gameboy and his locket. I couldn't help but open it and remind myself of the date. _1. 15. 1996. _That also fell on my father's birthday, the year before my mother died.

I could tell that on January 15th, 1996, was the date in which Sonic's parents both died in the alleged car accident. He was only 4 when it happened. At the age of 4, his life was taken away from him. And at the age of 10 (or 16 in this world) he was killed by some monster in some world we didn't even know about.

I felt sorry for him. Really, I did. I felt like I was a little responsible for it. He was annoying, but he didn't deserve what happened to him. What I felt confused by was how his body suddenly disappeared. I saw no trace of the monster, save for his footprints, and I didn't see him bleeding and dead by the side of the path. At least I didn't have to bury him, I thought.

I look back at the locket, then decided I would honor his death. I put it around my neck, it gleaming in the light as it quivered around it. And for some reason, I felt like keeping his crushed belongings, even if they were now considered worthless. They were the last few remnants of himself, and I felt like I couldn't throw them away. The knapsack still had room for a pack of cigarettes anyways, so it wasn't like I had to throw out anything to have room.

The sky was completely black now, the only things lighting the night were some of the lights coming from the buildings and streetlights. It looked as if the stars were being suffocated by a long, black thick cloud of hazy smoke, much like the sky would be near the church due to the factory. However, as I gazed more into the night, I saw a blinking blazing glow across the fog, a big silhouette flying. It was like a plane, with the flashing blue and red lights that made you think what you were seeing was a UFO. At first I thought it was a star that somehow managed to shine through the smog, but it was moving, very slowly, then the light began to get brighter, as if the silhouette was coming to where I was standing.

There was now a little noise other than the wind hollering in the emptiness. I heard some heavy flapping. The silhouette began to have a shape. It was a long, sleek strand of silver approaching me, the light I was beginning to notice was a lantern hanging off of the silver. Since this was a brand new world with its own set of rules, I imagined that this was a creature with wings, and someone was possibly riding it. I was right when I began to see more of this creature's shape, revealing itself to be a metallic dragon, the street lights beginning to reflect off its scales. Its sheen was so polished that it looked as if it was made out of chrome, as the dragon's sharp blue eyes began to notice me, flapping its wings erratically to prepare for a landing.

Thank God there was a streetlamp anchored to the ground near me, or else I would've been blown away by this beast. As it stopped making the wind harsher than it already was, it fell with a loud quaking thud, the dragon possibly cracking the street.

The dragon's scales even mirrored my reflection. And I finally realized of how much of a piece of shit I looked like. My quills were ruffled as if I woke up this morning and didn't gave a damn of how I looked, my eyes looked swollen and puffy, and my fur was dirty and coarse. I felt like I worried so much today that I ended up looking like this and not even notice until a reflection such as this catches me off-guard. As I stared into the dragon's many mirrors, I heard, "Hey there! I haven't seen you around these parts!"

It was a short, stout man, with a thick, black mustache, wearing a velvety blue vest, large ears (ears that were nearly comical in size), and olive green eyes that I thought looked lively, as if this man went on many adventures along with his chromed dragon and enjoyed life, marked by big bushy eyebrows that were just as comical as his ears. I stood there stupidly in the silence, not answering him, until he asked me, "Where are you from? What's your name, lad?"

The dragon also gazed at me, with crystal-clear blue eyes, similar to my mother's, as I finally decided to speak. "People call me Shadow. I'm actually from a world different from here. I came here with someone else, but I don't know where he is. I assumed he died."

His eyes shifted from me to the red building, then back at me. "I see. You're from Reality. And I'm sorry to hear of your partner."

"He wasn't my partner. Merely someone who got into this mess along with me." I noticed then the word he used to call the world I came from was Reality. I wondered why they used this word, but this world was very much like Fantasy, with its mythical creatures such as dragons and beasts and possibly other folklore. "What do you call this world? Do you just call it Fantasy? Since you called the other one Reality?"

"Well, no," he answered. "We simply call this world Beauty. You know. When you stare at a woman and you can think of no other word but 'beautiful'. Maybe this world isn't as 'beautiful' as we what we deemed it, but that's what we call it. And its name stuck for many millennia."

"So this world existed for many years? Many millions of years ago? And it was called Beauty for that many years?"

I wanted to ask more questions, for now I was even more interested in this world, but the strange man only interrupted me with showing the palm of his hand to me and saying, "Even I don't know the answers to those questions. No one knows. However, I know a little about Reality. Maybe too much. It is such an awful place."

"What do you know about it? What do you think makes it so terr-…"

"As I said, too many things," he once more interrupted me. "At night, the streets are quiet. At night, people have to stay inside their homes. It's just for the safety of everyone here. Monsters and the like, you know? I was just about to return home to this city. You can come with me, Shadow. Even someone from Reality can't be out at night. You don't want to be dead like the person who went with you to this world. Silfas will take you there."

I assumed Silfas was the name of his dragon. At first I was a little hesitant to riding that thing…it continued to stare at me with those cerulean eyes, as if I was its enemy and it was trying very hard to not go ahead and crush me. I tried hard to ignore it however, as I climbed up on the dragon's back and sat near its tail. I could hear the flapping of its wings again, as we began to be gradually lifted from the ground. "My home is not far from here, but if you're not used to riding a dragon it can be a bit jarring, so hold on tight."

After rising more in the air, higher than the buildings, able to see the red dots of light strung together by metal and seeing the world's three moons more fully, all lined in a row in the colors of a creamy gold and a bright fiery red that seemed to emanate over the ocean blue moon. For some reason, I imagined the moons fighting for dominance over the skies until the dragon began to zoom towards the night sky, feeling as if I was going to fly from the dragon's body. I quickly gripped the dragon's tail to keep my balance and hoping to God or whatever being Beauty prayed to that I didn't fall to my death.

The ride was jarring. And even if the breeze of the night air was enjoyable, not to mention the sights, I still hated the ride. I kept feeling like I was going to die and I felt a little sick inside. I tried to keep my composure though when the man landed his dragon slowly near his home that looked similar to a log cabin. I was surprised the dragon didn't blow it away, because it looked poorly built, with dirty tinted windows and what looked like a cluttered array of trash and broken junk near it. The lights were still on in his home, but looked dim due to the windows.

"We're here. Don't worry about any beasts coming near here. Silfas will simply crunch their bones with her teeth."

"Then why do we need to be inside a building when your dragon could've simply ate any monsters that came within feet of us?"

He seemed to pause a little, as if he was stumped by my question. But after a few moments, he could only reply with "there are very powerful monsters near the city. If we didn't fly out of there we could still get hurt."

We hopped off, as he led me to his house, fumbled with his keys, and opened the door. Immediately entering the home I felt cold and my nostrils were hit by a pungent smell of shit and cigarettes. The floor had bits of trash scattered around, as if the man was too lazy to pick up his own mess, the TV was still on, showing a bunch of people fighting and yelling at each other, while in the main room I could only see just the TV and one lone couch, along with beasts the man possibly killed stuffed like taxidermy. A three-horned bull and a deer that seemed to have tree branches on its head.

"Since you're here for the night, do you want anything to drink to start things off? Coffee, soda…"

"How about a beer?" I thought this was going to be a long night. Might as well dull all of my senses living in a dump like this.

"Uh…yeah, I have beer. You're 18, right?"

I nodded.

"Okay, then I won't get in trouble with the law. You look 18, so I trust you." He went to his mini-fridge and pulled out a bottle with yellow liquid that looked like piss and handed it to me. I was able to twist the cap off and started to drink. It looked like piss, and it tasted like piss, but I didn't care. Whatever was going to get me through the night.

"So you're from Reality," he said as he sat at his cheap round wooden table, sitting down. "A horrible place. This land is called Beauty for a reason. It's a much better place to deal with than Reality. But we don't have many people from Reality come here. We've heard of the world a long time ago, but only about three other people like you have ever come here. Two of them died…or should I say three, and there's only a man who keeps coming back and you just suddenly appeared."

I knew that other people came to this world. One of them was probably the pastor. He probably knew about this world and wanted to keep it away from the public, so he locked it off probably due to the people who died.

"Do you have any theories on how this world was created? Do you have a government like we do back in our world? Tell me everything you know. I need to stay here. I can't come back. I don't want to come back to my world."

"Hey, maybe I'll tell you everything in a game of cards, eh?" It was then that I suddenly saw a stack of blue cards in his hand, shuffling them and making them flicker and fold. "Might as well entertain ourselves for the night, right? I barely had anyone to play…what you would call Texas Hold'em in your world? There's barely anything on TV tonight and I desperately want to play a card game with somebody other than my buddy Ralph. Trust me, I'll explain things."

I never played Texas Hold'em, or what they called Standalone Gems in their world. He taught me (though he told me once I got better he wasn't going to take it easy on me), and he began to smoke, which in turn caused me to want to smoke again, and while we played and as I finished through my pissy beer he told me a few things about this world.

"Yes, we have a government. We have a leader that we voted to make decisions for Beauty…"

"So you have a democratic government?"

"Yes." He twisted his cigarette on the ashtray, grinding it out. "The strange thing is though, even if our leader is doing the right things for us and is making good decisions, people still complain about him. And claim he's evil. It's like we think some of those leaders are too good to be true. But get a man who claims to be doing things for God and he fucks up everything for you, we don't complain. We don't really say much. And guess what? Right now we don't like our leader."

I thought how ridiculous it all sounded. It was a different world, but how did that logic make sense to _any _world out there? "Do you like your leader, regardless of anybody likes him or not?"

"Ehhh," he sounded. "I think people just gotta accept that our leader isn't a superhuman capable of solving every problem out there. Everyone has flaws. If you're looking for the perfect leader, you're never going to be satisfied because there's no such thing as the perfect leader."

It all sounded reasonable. But it was then that I was surprised I didn't pay attention enough to these things around me. On the label of my beer, other than the surgeon general's warning and the nutrition information, was an advertisement. It had more color than the label of the beer itself, mostly colored in reds, telling me to also try Red Cockatrice Cigarettes. There was a red silhouette of a bird on the front package, while it showed a satisfied blonde haired woman dressed in a red sparkling dress and heels with luscious red lips smoking the cigarettes.

The blue cards also seemed to have some kind of advertisement on the back of them, trying to tell me that I also needed to buy the Macalah card set. I wasn't sure on what Macalah was, but I assumed it was also another card game. All the while when I stared at the TV, it was advertising a burger with three layers of meat and cheese, all the while pronouncing a catchy jingle. In fact, ever since the show was over and I was playing cards with this guy, all I ever saw were advertisements.

I also noticed that I was out of my beer and I really wanted another.

"Another beer? You're 18, so I suppose." He went back to his mini-fridge and pulled out yet another beer probably made from horse piss. After staring at the hamburger commercial while he traveled to his fridge I also remembered that I was hungry and haven't eaten anything since I poured myself a bowl of cereal before I went to church. "Got anything to eat too?"

He seemed a little annoyed knowing he had to walk back into the kitchen right after he just got me a beer. He lurched back to it, as I decided to stare at the TV again. It went back to the show after advertising a new brand of makeup. The show had many women on it, and it seemed as if many of them had the perfect bodies and the perfect face and the perfect clothes. But every word that lingered in the air that came from their mouths was surrounded by a sense of emptiness and ignorance. In fact, even if I looked at their eyes, they seemed dead. As if they were zombies, and had no mind of their own. The men in the show were the same way. They had a perfect, muscular body and a perfect set of hair along with what looked like very expensive clothing, but they seemed dead inside. Their voices even sounded still and monotone, but yet I could see them fight with each other over something and even having sex. But yet everything they did, carried no emotion. They did those things as if their bodies were programmed to do them. All the while their eyes were dilated and seemed as if they were possessed. I also noticed many times they mentioned a product, such as Coolette Mayo and Universal Phones. And I only mentioned two products, but they seemed to advertise around 45 of them. I soon casted my eyes off of it when the man brought what looked like some kind of gray stew heated up by the microwave.

"I don't have much, but I just recently hunted a Gaarlsion and made some stew out of the meat. It's not bad. Try it."

I wasn't even sure of what a Gaarlsion was, but I was too hungry to care. Even though the stew looked like paste, it had a nice, spicy taste to it, and I began to eat it as he continued to talk and deal, even if the food was a little overheated.

"We believe in God too, although there are people who are into other religions too. But you know, it doesn't seem to matter too much. If you don't believe in God…you're pretty much considered evil. I'm a Karasian. I believe in God, but in a much different view than normal folks. For example, the normal people who believe in God think only if you're read the Bible and go to church and Christian, you're saved. Me? It only matters if you're good, regardless of religion. Even if you're Christian and you're a major asshole, God won't save ya. You'll go to Hell. We believe in the whole…karma thing you guys believe in too."

I wasn't listening to him that much. I drank half of my beer already. Already when I was in this world I noticed how strange it was. With these empty people and the empty streets and the ads and the complaining about good leaders…I kind of wondered why it was called Beauty.

"Why is this world called Beauty? And why is it so much better than Reality?"

"Oh?"

I looked at him, repeating. "Why is this land called Beauty. Why is it better than Reality."

"Well…" he scratched his head. "I know this place is a piece of shit house, but I'm going to show you around the city sometime. Really, it's a very nice city. Beauty actually is a very nice place. Trust me, after living here for a while to just get away from Reality, you'll see how great it is. It's…incredibly hard for me to explain, but you'll have to just see it to believe it." He was silent for a moment, then began to extend a hand towards me. "And I'm sorry. When we met and when we began to play this game, I didn't introduce myself. I'm Orwell. I don't have a lot of money and I live in a shitty neighborhood, but hey, welcome to my lovely abode." Seeing as how I was slightly drunk and began to be less antisocial I shook his hand, even if he began to cough grotesquely into his other hand.

We played the game and he explained more things. I had my 4th beer, and I asked for my 5th. Orwell still didn't stop giving me the beers and I was beginning to get loud. I was talking to Orwell more, less asking questions, more smoking my cigarettes until I had none left, using some of his Red Cockatiels, and screaming whenever he beat me in a deal.

The room was beginning to spin. The colors of the walls and lights were beginning to smear in my eyes. I began to eat more of his gray paste of a stew, and I felt like it was making me even more loud and obnoxious. I was about to deal when I began to hear some kind of alarm sounding off in the TV, a screech and series of beeps as I began to see an old, white echidna speaking to us as if we were right there with him, listening to his spiel.

"Hello, all citizens of Beauty. I have been informed of something that may make us rise a threat level in this world. We have received reports of very dangerous criminals roaming the lands and endangering the lives of our citizens. Although we'll do our best to defeat this threat and keep this world safe, I advise you all to be on the lookout for a blue…"

"Ugh, this shit depresses me." I wasn't sure why I decided to shut off the TV. But yet Orwell noticed that I couldn't even walk straight. It was as if I suffered a major injury, stumbling and almost falling to the floor just to shut the TV off, bumping into the couch and chair and nearly keeling over when I came back. "I don't want to hear that bullshit. TV annoys the shit out of me. Let's keep playing, I have a feeling I'm going to win this one!"

"Actually Shadow, I was thinking of hitting the hay. It's almost 1 AM, you know, pretty late. I think you should get some rest too."

"Shut the hell up and fetch me another beer and keep playing! I think I'm going to win, I can feel it!"

"Actually, I think you had enough. You don't need any more, Shadow…"

"Why the hell not? Give me a damn break here! The other guy who was with me just got killed! Does that give me the right to keep on drinking?"

For some reason, probably because I'm a completely different person when I drink, I began to hide my face from Orwell, hiding it deep into my arms, as I began to holler while tears began to stream my face.

"Sonic's dead! Sonic's dead! He sacrificed himself to save me! To save me! I didn't even want to live that much anyways! I fucking hate my dad, I fucking hate my school, I really fucking hate my life…and the little bastard decides to save my life! I killed him, Orwell, I killed him!"

I couldn't see his face, but I could hear a sense of concern in his voice. "You didn't kill him, Shadow. You're lucky he did that for you. Not many people actually have the balls to do what he did for you."

"No, I killed him! I killed him! If I wasn't so stupid…I could've just tried to get away! Not face the damn thing! And Sonic got killed! He got killed! And it's all my fault!"

It was then that my throat began to feel acid rushing through it, bile rising. I couldn't help it. I threw up on his floor, all the gray stew escaping from my stomach. Tears were still streaming down my face as I puked on his floor, sniffling pathetically.

Orwell helped me to his bed and told me to try to get to sleep as he cleaned up the mess I made. I couldn't even describe what his room looked like at that moment. Everything was swirling and blending together, like a painter smearing paint on the canvas. I continued to sniffle and weep over the death of Sonic. Something that seemed so trivial to me was now becoming major guilt. I wished so much that Sonic was still alive, as I felt like I was the reason behind his death, that I could've done something for him to not die the way he did.

I looked at his knapsack again. I couldn't help but look at all his crushed belongings and hollering loudly as the image of his locket that was around my neck faded into darkness. I cried myself to sleep that night.


	4. Chapter 4

**AN: The chapter has been incomplete for a long time, and I decided to let this fic lie in the Graveyard, as I cannot think about completing it as I got much better projects to work on.**

**Here's a spoiler alert: It basically was talking about America. A big metaphor about how America sucks, basically. But I think I was trying way too hard to be an edgy writer who tried to get across her point, and well, I was still learning back then. A Dragonfly's Heart and Wonderland were the next major works I made that bettered me as a writer, but there's some pieces I made like this one...that I just didn't think would be so good to revive.**

**I'm leaving it on for those who do enjoy it, but I don't think I want to work on it anymore. If you want to take on the challenge of writing it, be my guest. Just let me know of the results, because I would like to read.**

I woke up, and I noticed how gray it was outside. Not much different from the usual Britain weather. Beauty and Reality were alike in that their weather system was also complete shit, and that it was always raining and cold and the chill keeps biting at your skin and it seems like it's going to snow at any moment, even if it was already summer. It's never hot and humid in Britain or in Beauty. It was always shit, with a rain cloud full of shit, and a storm that's going to splash absolutely fucking diarrhea on your car.

You think I'm angry? You think I'm angry because of what happened to Sonic? Don't be fucking ridiculous. I know a hat from your ass instantly, and your head is an ass. You think you can be a free thinker whenever an advertisement plays, that you're not going to buy that car or buy that food product, then before you know it you spend money on it anyways? And you say that this came from your "free will" and your "rational thinking decisions"? You're an asshole is what I was meaning to say. A selfish asshole who buys and buys and buys and consumes and consumes and consumes and doesn't stop, just keeps on feeding and breeding and exceeding and shitting out excess like a worm in a pile of dirt, and that's what you are, buddy. A worm, a measly pink wriggly worm that can breed by chopping the little fucker in half. Stupidity is something that spreads, with all of these ads and this media and the people we follow, isn't it about time we actually pay our teachers a little higher for the bullshit they go through, to teach a bunch of asinine children about the bullshit we caused and how not to cause it, but they don't listen and call your lecture boring and proceed to listen to their Nine Inch Nails CDs and their Fallout Boy or whatever the hell they listen to and scratch "Fuck yous" in the desk and swear all they want because their fucking school can't allow grown adults to swear and they have to have policemen in the cafeteria because the children of our nation are dumb enough to do stupid shit there and threaten to beat someone and throw chairs and start meaningless bullshit that doesn't mean a single goddamn thing in five years. What happened to some of the men we used to follow, who said the future of America was going to be better? What happened to The Beatles preaching about hope and love in their songs that were popular what seemed to be so long ago, and suddenly we end up with a shitty goddamn nation such as this, and the adults blame it on us, not on their own goddamn upbringing that made us this way. Am I rambling? Am I like my goddamn father, who used to ramble like this every single goddamn day who would say that the world was going to end and that we had to go to the basement and I had to shit in a bucket and somehow we're going to be saved by Jesus Christ, who just witnessed me having bloody fucking diarrhea after drinking from the rusty faucet because my father couldn't bother to get me a goddamn drink? My father is the worst, I can tell you so many fucking things about my father and it wouldn't make much of a goddamn difference. My father is a sick man, a sicker man than you and I, but at least we have one thing we agree with: the world is going to end, and I know that it deserves it. Not because of sinners or gays or Jews or anything like that, but because the world is so goddamn stupid that it's going to end in its own, ironic way. And half of America still can't find out exactly what the definition of irony is.

I was still drunk, and I was a raving mad lunatic, much like my father was.

I noticed Orwell getting up, preparing a simple breakfast, as he had boxer briefs on and no shirt, revealing his muscular torso, and his mustache seemed to be sagging with the morning grogginess as even the smell of fresh bacon wouldn't wake him up. I could see he had coffee on the counter, which was something that was proved to not cure hangovers, but I thought it might help anyways.

I don't remember how many beers I drank, but from the beer bottles collecting dust near the windowsill, I guessed about a mere 8.

My virgin tongue has discovered beer, and the very first time I tasted it, I became an alcoholic, much as I became an addict to cigarettes. Now it seemed like everyday, even if I had a hangover, I had to have a beer. After a coffee, of course.

Orwell smiled, the thin white smile that was hiding underneath a busy mustache like a fluffy caterpillar eating a piece of fruit. Then I'm reminded of The Hungry Caterpillar, the caterpillar that ate in so much excess that he became a beautiful butterfly. Of course that never happened in real life. You got the cocoon alright, but you became a full blown beautiful idiot. Or so from what my understanding was.

And in a few minutes, we got our bacon, but I noticed that Orwell was also slightly hungover from last night, and part of the bacon was burnt. Even if I felt sick and about to throw up any minute now, I ate anyways. Because I heard if you had nausea eating tend to help. As illogical as that advice sounded like.

I held my head, and it was throbbing, like my brain needed to be stabbed with an ice pick in order to stop the red hot pain. Orwell only sighed, held his head too, and said, "There's some aspirin in the cupboard if you want to take it. I might need a dose of the magic medicine myself. My head has been killing me for the past night."

"What…even happened last night? Do you remember? I remember we were playing cards, and I had a little too much to drink, and the TV had an announcement, but I think I turned it off. What was the president trying to say to us? God, I wished I could…"

"You said it was nothing important, so you turned it off. Even if the president's announcements are between life and death at times. Even if the entire nation seems to hate his guts, whenever he interrupts the TV to tell us something, it's usually something important, but nope, you said it was stupid, and turned it off."

"Did I really?" I said, incredulous. I continued to hold my stinging head as I opened up the pill bottle, full of yellow and red advertisements that told me I should also buy a sleeping aid and a painkiller and see a doctor about constant migraines somewhere near here that was a real professional (a real professional at being a sack of shit I said to myself), and I took the two small white pills and only hoped for the best. I was sure they wouldn't work, but it was either everything or nothing by that point.

"What's your president's name? Who is he like? And why does everyone hate him so much? Is there such a damn reason for it?"

"Usually, no. There isn't. But anyways, his name is Finitevius. Dr. Finitevius. To be honest, if the nation didn't hate him so much, we would certainly grow so much better than what we were already. The doc is a genius and knows what ails the common folk and how to solve it, and he says he will do everything he can to make everyone in Beauty happy, but hell, people say he's going to make them into slaves and kill the Christians and support gay rights, which the only one he's doing is supporting the gays. He's a brilliant man, and yet he continues to do his job, despite what people are thinking, because he wants to solve all our problems. And he has the best campaign I've ever seen. Serving free Crackola Cola and Mistro's Cheese, and playing the music I really love to get everyone associated with him. He knows the world is stupid, and he will use that to his advantage. They love the Crackola Cola and cheese; they can't get enough of it, those poor miserable bastards."

He lit another cigarette, the white stick fuming and burning a bright orange as he inhaled and then breathed out a gray blue stream of smoke like a concert to Nine Inch Nails or Fallout Boy or whoever I was talking about earlier. It probably didn't really matter, as long as you got the metaphor.

And looking at his cigarette, I wanted one too, and I bummed another one off him, fired yet another Red Cockatrice, but I had to admit it didn't taste as good as my Marlboros. My Marlboros had a more robust flavor, while these Cockatrices seem a little…cheap.

"Cheap, just the way Beauty likes to make them," he said, as if he read my exact initial thoughts. I wondered if this man was just like Finitevius, a genius like him, but he didn't seem like it, as he sat, slouched in his boxer briefs, with a beer on hand and a cigarette on his left.

"If Beauty didn't make everything cheap and washed out, then the whole entire nation would be bankrupt. All of it. All of our tax dollars would go to things we were planning on buying in the first place, cause hell, you can't imagine a life without cigarettes, a life without beer, a life without books and TV and movies and games and media in general, so we would be lost. But something tells me maybe the world would be better off that way, never knowing the path it's going to take, whether it's good or bad. It's going to be lost in the galaxy, in the stars, until it finds a red hot sun to come home to, and suddenly, we have light. And maybe one day, we'll be the same way, if we shut ourselves in darkness." He crushed his cigarette on his chair, creating a burn mark that seeped through the cheap leather. He obviously didn't care about his furniture very much. He knew it was garbage, so he might as well reduce it to garbage. He was either a genius or an idiot like the rest of them.

"And maybe if we did that, Jesus would consider us a planet without sin."

"Everyone sins Shadow. The planet would never be completely devoid of sin. It happens everywhere, in someone's thoughts, or in someone's actions. Hell, did you know that about every second, a hundred people sin, and there's another, and oops, there's another. Jesus can't make it up, even if he got crucified again. We would just sin, all over again, and there would be nothing we would learn from what he did. But that's not entirely the point of why he did that. He realizes everyone sins. And that's why there's praying for forgiveness. But some believe once you do that, you're free to do whatever the hell you want, all over again. But that's not it at all."

"Then what is it then?"

He looked at me in the face sternly, and then said, "Praying to God every time you had one bad thought in your head…that's fucking ridiculous. It's a crock of shit. Just live your life the best you can and not worry about that shit. There's only one life you live, this isn't a damn videogame where you have multiple lives every time you fuck up. Just press forward and do the best you can and if you fuck up, oh well. That's life. You should just try to be a good person and that's all anyone can ask for, really. You don't need all this other shit in religion, just read the Bible and realize you need to try to be a good person and not worry about that other stuff."

I had enough talk about religion for a while. It was starting to make my head hurt even more. That ice pick couldn't come fast enough.

"Let's go outside for some fresh air and you can tell me all about your friend, Sonic. And maybe I will unlock yet even more secrets for you to discover about Beauty when we have this talk. A meeting of the minds, you can say. But I think I should get a pair of decent slacks and a shirt before I go outside. I don't want people think I'm some hick like the south side of Beauty. Fuck those poor bastards. Fuck those poor bastards straight to Hell."

And then we left, to have a talk about Sonic, to have a talk about Beauty, and how much it was yet an escape, but yet a horrible realization once you came here, this wasn't much of an escape at all. I learned this from my meeting of our minds.

"So Sonic lived in a church, with his new father the pastor? And that his parents died a long time ago? That must be tough on the poor kid, but to have suddenly died like that, I can understand why you were so upset." I can still imagine him sitting there without a shirt on, just swallowing his beer down his gullet and doing nothing else but sitting outside and letting the sun roast him like a Thanksgiving turkey. I imagined him this way because Orwell seems to be the kind of guy to enjoy that kind of thing. There were some smart men who did. Ernest Hemingway possibly was one of them, and Orwell seemed to carry that kind of quality with him, to hunt and live basically a lazy and simple life, but yet carry the intelligence of some mistreated genius. His thick mustache seemed to ride up his nose as he thought about everything I told him, as he bobbed his head up and down gregariously. I simply looked at the locket and remembered the date, replaying it over and over again in my head. _1. 15. 1996. 1. 15. 1996. _It was a date that I had to remember for the rest of my life, a date that was more tragic than anything else I've heard of or cared about in my old shed out 14 year old life, other than the date I was born. _8. 24. 1988. _That was another date I had to remember too, a date that I thought would always live in infamy.

"In fact, I think I've seen your pastor around here. I think I even met him too. I can't remember his name now, because it's been a long time since he's been here. But we met. Yes. We met. And he wants this world to no longer be full of sin, but in order to do that; you need to make an apple pie."

"What?" I suddenly tuned him out when I looked at the locket, but now I just heard the words apple pie being used without a context, and I wasn't even sure at all what he was talking about now. But he simply grinned, his bleached white teeth pushing forth in my mind as the mustache crawled further into his nose, and he said, "Carl Sagan in your world. 'To make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe.' And wouldn't you know it; I tried to make an apple pie from scratch as soon as I heard that. And it's really damn hard and it came out looking like a big fat turd. Maybe to make such a perfect apple pie you really do need to create the universe. And to rid us all of our sins, you need to create an apple pie from scratch. And I'm sure your pastor can't do it. Priests have always been lousy cooks and lousy babysitters if you know what I mean."

And I suddenly remembered of my mother. And how she made a perfect apple pie every time I came back from school. Although it wasn't the time to mourn her again by remembering of that fond memory, I thought my mother must've created about a million universes, all of which were grazed with cinnamon and had the finest sauces of apples and were baked to perfection until we suddenly had a nice, warm universe for God to eat, if he even existed at all, by this point.

"So what are you planning to even do here? You're an outsider. You know nothing of our world, and you expect to come out of here alive. If you knew which way to get out of here was, then I would suggest you'd do that right now. Even if Sonic seems to be gone and lost."

"Are you kidding? If I ever came back, his father would kill me! And mine would too! They would kill me twice, stab me to death twice, make me drink until I'm stark raving mad again until I pass out twice, and either I come out of here with Sonic with me, or I never come back at all. Even if the pastor tries to find me here, I'll just run, far away, until he can't catch me. Somewhere too far away for anyone to reach.

"And that 'somewhere too far away for anyone to reach' actually doesn't exist, Shadow," he said with a grave face.

"What the hell do you even mean? Of course it exists! Doesn't it exist for everyone?"

"No. It doesn't. Things don't work that way. Eventually you'll have to return, with Sonic in tow or not. We can't run away until our feet grow tired and bleed off our skin. We can't hide away in darkness where we ourselves can't see where we're going. Eventually, people will find you, and eventually, you'll have to return. Your father, you told me a little about him, I'd imagine he would have yet another breakdown to see you gone. And once your father has a breakdown, realizes that the only people in his life that actually mattered to him are gone, you know what's going to happen?"

"No."

"Bang."

He held his two fingers against his head, making a handgun, shooting an imaginary bullet in his head. But I knew we didn't have a gun in the house, else I would've held it against my head too, and would've died to not see my father shooting himself too.

"And then you're off to a foster home, which you say they tend to be terrible places, or you're going to be with the pastor, who will try to fill the empty void with you because Sonic is gone. Do you want that, at all? To live with a damn guy who probably molests children in his spare time. I'm pretty sure that pastor that comes here does that. All pastors do that to everyone, by God. And you hate religion more than anything. Is that true?"

I didn't even need to think about that. "Yes. So I should come back eventually…"

"No!" His face was red now, a violent shade of scarlet, and he looked up at me as he seemed to jump and shout and scream, "No! You need to leave this place now! It's not a good place for you, it's not a good place for me, it's not a good place for anyone in this damn world, and you might as well leave now. Sooner the better. Later the worst. Go back in your damn little hole and don't come back, if you know what's good for you."

"But Sonic! That's the main reason I need to stay here! I need to find Sonic again, wherever the hell he's at! He may as well be good as dead, but I think I can sense him being alive somewhere in this world, that I just need to deny he's dead and search for the helpless bastard. Wherever he's at, I need to find him! And I won't leave until I've done so!"

He paused, as the redness soon faded away underneath his skin, and he could only sit down again, once again being a somewhat decent human being. If he was even human, I for sure couldn't tell if everyone on Beauty was all humans or they were all a different species of humans. Ones that lived on advertising and loud TV shows and God wishing that this world didn't even exist.

"You find Sonic then, even if he is dead." He bowed his head, hiding his face, as if the effects of three beers were already getting to him. "But either way, you'll have to return sometime. I'm sorry if I lied to you about this world. It's as different from your world as different as white is to black. You leave my house and travel the city, asking for directions on where to go to next, and you get out of my house at once. I can't stand freeloaders, and I can't stand people who don't understand what consequences are, for living in a world that's the black to the white. The white is much better to live. It's not dirty, it's not full of sin, and it's not full of lies and deceit and stealing and killing and stupidity. How about I pack you some things you might need to find this bastard and you leave, right now, and never come back. It's the most I can do for people who are blind and can't see that white and black. Even the colorblind can. Black and white is all they see."

As different as white was to black, Orwell changed into a completely different person. He used to been friendly and sociable to someone who was now threatening me to leave the house and probably would get me to by chasing me with a double barrel shotgun. His moods seemed mercurial, and I also realized that people with bipolar also saw things completely in black and white, and I knew I possibly solved the puzzle in his cryptic words.

He handed me a bag full of supplies and food (which most of it was mostly meat, which I was expecting this from Orwell's hunting career), and as soon as I caught one last gleam of his eye, one last gleam of his teeth, one last gleam of his bushy mustache that always seemed to ride on his face, he slammed the door, locked it tight, and I was suddenly out in the gray cold outside world of Beauty, where people were now walking outside of the buildings and doing their usual business, not at all like people who once hid away from the darkness in fear of "monsters".

I looked at his dragon, Silfas, who continued to stand by his house with much focus and attentiveness as a mother guarding her young. I wonder how Orwell managed to control a dragon as beautiful and as mystic as Silfas, but maybe one day I would figure that out and meet Orwell again, the strange character who told me that if you could make an apple pie, you have the powers of God to make a universe.

And I thought about my mother again. Maybe she truly was God all along, who died for our sins. Died for all the sins my father and I have made in all these years.


End file.
